School districts add handling of cyberbullying to their policies

While Mentor Schools has been addressing the issue of cyber-bullying for some time, the district is just now in the process of updating its policy on paper.

Other area school districts will be doing the same thing to comply with an updated House Bill 116, which requires that all schools include electronic forms of bullying in their policies to keep current.

Assistant Superintendent Bill Porter explained that the policy changes reinforce what the district is already doing in action.

"For the last several years we have been very, very aggressive in addressing the bullying concerns and issues, and the language (of HB 116) just puts into words for board policy a lot of the things that we have already been attending to," he said.

"And cyberbullying is one

example. That's one specific area that we have focused on because we knew that, as a nation, that's been trending up. So as part of our ... antibullying program through the schools, we've been addressing that."

The policy is expected to be adopted after a second reading by the board.

The mandated changes call for inclusion of the school bus as an area that is watched by districts, an area that Superintendent Matt Miller said was already considered as part of the district's responsibility.

And any type of bullying that occurs through electronic means, via cellphones, computers and the more obvious Facebook and Twitter is to be covered, Miller said.

"So much of this matches already with our practices that we had in place. We're always looking to fine tune those things, add anything supplemental that will help us, but we've been addressing the cyberbullying. We've been training our staff on an annual basis. We have reporting mechanisms for people who wish to do that. We've had support for victims of bullying. We've always applied our policy to places such as the school bus lunchroom and recess," Porter said.

Monitoring cyberbullying begins with a report from

a victim or parent of bullying activity online, Porter said.

"Sometimes that comes from parent, sometimes that comes from students. We feel we have an obligation to stop it, to inform all the proper parties involved and respond to it in a way that minimizes the opportunity for that to happen," he said.

Concerns of privacy invasion may come up, but Miller said the priority should always be student safety.

"If a student is in danger, physically and or mentally,

I think it's the school's responsibility to step in," he said.

"There's always a potential for (a concern of invasion of privacy). You just have to (fall) on the side of what you think is right and the safety of the kids."

The state bill also calls

for putting in place a method of discipline for students who make false bullying reports, something that happens, but not often, Porter said.